A large company may employ various systems to manage aspects of human resources and enterprise resources. The various systems can include Human Resource Management systems, Employee Relationship Management systems, Enterprise Resources Planning systems, supply chain management and warehouse management, and custom applications for the purpose of sharing data. For purposes of simplicity, such systems are herein referred to as enterprise application systems or enterprise system.
It is not unusual for large companies to have satellite offices in several parts of the world. To deploy the company's enterprise application system in each of the company's satellite offices may prove to be very expensive and inefficient. For example, it would be wasteful to deploy the company's enterprise application system and build the IT infrastructure to support such a system in a small satellite sales office. Further, maintenance, and upgrades to the enterprise application system in the various satellite offices add considerable expense. On the other hand, not to deploy the company's enterprise application system in the satellite offices would be to unwisely hamper the working ability of the employees working out of the satellite offices. For example, employees in the various sales offices in the Company may need to track leads and opportunities and expect such data to be synchronized with the Company's enterprise applications in the enterprise application system.
Thus, what is needed is a cost-effective way for users of enterprise applications in an enterprise application system to synchronize application data with the enterprise applications in the enterprise application system.